Solar recycling company SOLARCYCLE announced an investment of $344 million in a solar glass manufacturing facility in Georgia’s Cedartown in the U.S., which will use recycled materials from retired solar panels to manufacture new solar glass.

The new manufacturing facility is scheduled to begin construction this year and will be operational in 2026.

The company said its proprietary recycling technology allows it to extract 95% of the value from used solar modules. This has enabled SOLARCYCLE to sign agreements with 40 of the largest solar companies in the U.S. to reuse and recycle their solar modules.

The glass, which will be sold directly back to the domestic solar manufacturers, is expected to fill a critical gap in the country’s supply chain to build more solar modules in America.

“SOLARCYCLE’s first-of-its-kind facility is a transformational investment for the Polk County community and will help drive its economy for years to come. In Georgia, our strong energy mix is one of the key reasons our state has attracted generational investments in recent years. We will keep working to secure our power supply through exciting projects like this one,” said Governor Brian Kemp.

The company claimed the Georgia facility will position SOLARCYCLE as one of the first manufacturers of specialized glass for crystalline-silicon (c-Si) photovoltaics in the country, with the capacity to make 5-6 GW of solar glass annually.

“There is no question that solar panel manufacturing is booming in the State of Georgia. We are thrilled to join the team and build our recycled solar glass plant in Cedartown,” said Suvi Sharma, CEO and co-founder of SOLARCYCLE.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Director of Solar Energy Technologies Office, Becca Jones-Albertus, confirmed that the DOE has invested $15 million in the company’s research and development efforts in a bid to increase domestic solar manufacturing and recycling under the country’s Inflation Reduction Act.

In 2022, SOLARCYCLE raised $6.6 million in growth funding from renewable energy investors.

As solar recycling gains momentum, a team of researchers at the University of South Wales introduced a new method to recycle solar panels, which could potentially recycle 5 to 50 million kg of silver from cumulative waste by 2050.